


Road Thing

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Highlander: The Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:47:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The woods are full of creatures.  Sometimes they come right up to the highway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Road Thing

He's a funny little creature, in the way that young men in this particular stretch of time can be.  A sea of calm and shocking intelligence.  A lovely little thing, though not a true rarity.  They all find their way to the Pacific Northwest, sooner or later.  A decentralized mecca, or a version of that lost, idealized San Francisco, drifting ever farther north into wilderness.

An hour north of Sacramento when Methos picks him up.  Scruffy boy with a backpack on the highway's edge, only half-heartedly hitchhiking.  It's not cold, yet, though it will be, later. Pacific storms rolling towards the continent.  He'd like to claim he can feel them, some mystic product of his age, but really, it's easier to trust satellite weather.

So many people on the roads this week.  He saw two young women at a rest stop, both crouched on a picnic table in the shade.  An older woman and two children riding in the back of a truck.  Boys in the trees.  Men with shaggy beards and army bags drift in and out of his attention.  The most obvious explanation is a festival of some sort, up the coast.  For the past half-century or so, the culture of social drifters has focussed itself on nearly primeval gatherings marked by soft drugs and inadequate plumbing.

Methos is fairly sure that one of the major reasons humanity continues to invent is to improve the chances of a hot bath now and then.  He was cold for hundreds of years at a time.  The first time he approached these mountains, he was looking for hot springs.  Bathing with the Victorians was always entertaining.  Men on one side of the stone walls, women on the other, at least in resorts.  In mining towns, men and whores together.  Or whores and children in the early morning, soaking the blue-cold out of their hands and feet.

The boy flicks ginger lashes at him.  This very tiny smile.  He's very quietly handsome, not quite gay enough to be actively cruising the man who picked him up, but not shy, either.  Nor frightened of strangers.  This one's grown up in a media-induced breakdown of a culture, and he doesn't even appear to be high.  He should be crawling out of his skin.

"You don't smell dangerous.  Just.  Old."

"Thanks."  Beat.  "Was that an insult?"

"No.  Just an observation.  I mean, you already know how old you are."

"Thirty-seven."

The boy flicks his lashes again.  Opens the glove compartment and catches the dozen or so mix tapes that fall out.  "Are these labelled right?"

"I have no idea."

All of these young men.  Like Byron and Percy.  Some of them are nearly that unbalanced. Medicated, maybe the Romantics would have survived better.  If mood stabilizers work on Immortals.  He doesn't know.

Rufus Wainright on the car's speakers.  The boy has no taste.  Methos says, "I have 'Justified' in there, somewhere."

The boy wrinkles his nose.  It's only been a decade since the Great Sacrifice of American Youth in Seattle.  Most of this tribe are too young to remember the stinking poverty of those few grunge years, but they're still dedicated to its music.  Methos remembers trying to drink in Seacouver when every bar in town featured thrift-shop garage bands aspiring to the temporary greatness of Pearl Jam.  

It isn't even *interesting*.  He wonders how long it'll take them to  
realize.

Two hundred years and counting.

"Is there some etiquette thing I can use to ask how old you really are?"

Methos reaches into the box in the boy's lap, pulls out the tape he wants without looking.  Little packet of pretty girls, a few extremely bad songs, sentiments that never made any pretense at being original.  He found them in Europe, five or six years ago, and he still loves them.

"I told you how old I am."

"You smell older.  What is this?"

"Wild Orchid.  I like them."

"I guess you do.  Is this your way of telling me you're a fourteen-year-old girl?"

"I could tell you that there's no reason to assume that the music of fourteen-year-old boys is any better.  What do you mean, 'smell'?"

"I've met thirty-seven-year-olds before.  You smell different.  Like lightning." Pause. "Look, I know you're not human.  It's cool."

"I can't imagine how you can possibly say that and presume that it is.  Cool."

"Humans take the Interstate."

"I'm getting on for middle aged.  I like the scenic route."

"The entire Northern California Pack is moving along this road.  There isn't a real human around for thirty miles.  Even the truckers along this stretch are mostly demons."

"Demons."  Methos has learned to spot most variations of insanity that crop up in this place, in this stretch of time.  The subtle differences in psychosis from earlier millennia.  This period produces mostly fantasies and voices.

He hasn't encountered a demon in nearly a thousand years.

Last time he did, he was in Normandy, buried as deeply as he could get in furs and books.  The alchemist at Dieppe.  They brought him sick children occasionally, sick animals fairly often. He saved perhaps a third of them, and someone kept him fed in return.  Occasionally, Christian pilgrims harassed him for shelter or food or money, and he had to explain to them, using very short words, that he didn't really care what their particular faith gave them to expect from him.

Just that one night.  Blue-grey skin inside the palmer's hood, soft request for proximity to his fire, and the offer of gold.  He hadn't seen anything like it since walking out of the desert, a millennium before that.  
   
"I'm not a demon."  Not in that sense.  There were rumours for years, after, of demon colonies above the arctic circle.  More likely the demons just drifted into cities large enough to hide them, down on the Mediterranean coast.  And some went into Africa . . .

"What are you?"

"Irritated, actually.  I'm the guy who gave you a lift."

"Sorry."

"You're forgiven."  

Music.  He likes 'Love Fool,' but he let someone else dub the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack for him, and he's always irritated when it drifts into Radiohead.  "Change that, would you?"

He gets.  Well.  Cyndi Lauper.  It's an improvement.

On the edge of the road, a girl wearing a sarong and tangled hemp strands holds out a thumb. She focusses on the boy in the passenger seat, sooner than she should, nods and pulls her hand away.

"Friend of yours?"

"Packmate."

Methos lets it go.  'She's So Unusual' chases him into the next town.  He stops without comment, pays for gas and snacks.  When he comes back, the boy's carefully cradling some sort of non-mainstream soda and beef jerky, leaning against the car.  Big man in front of him, barefoot and shaggy inside his old surf t-shirt and cargo shorts.  More hemp jewellery, tangled with the bones of small animals.

Just the smallest of windshifts, but the man turns on him.  Bared teeth and a faint, low growl. "What *are* you?"

Behind him, the boy says, "He's old.  Not dangerous."

Methos says, "Packmate?"

The boy nods.  "Maelcum, my ride.  Driver-guy, Maelcum."  Softly, "Mael, if he was going to eat me, he'd have done it miles ago."

Methos spreads his hands.  His sword's in the car, locked between blanket-layers in the trunk. There isn't another Immortal anywhere along this road.

Other monsters, though.  He remembers walking with Silas in Russian forests, barely a century before they parted.  Things that looked like men, half-naked and utterly unafraid, watched them for hours. Silas spread his hands, looked back.  Waited.  They left an hour before moonrise.

It fits together, just like that.  Packs.  Half a world and lifetimes away, he's stepped back into werewolf territory.

Methos says, "Why are you leaving California?"

"We lost in Sacramento."

"What?"

"Our land grants.  The Pack negotiated a land deal with the Spanish, three hundred or so years ago.  We had treaties with the tribes in these mountains before that.  But the government wants our land back; their lawyers decided it wasn't serving a purpose.  Some of the old ones sent back the first surveyors.  And we spent, like, six months in court, but we lost.  The legislature's warlocks made sure we'd move out."

Methos has seen a few dozen people moving, but he knows most of them won't take the roads.  There are a lot of werewolves migrating, this autumn.  Hundreds, maybe.

"Where are you going?"

"Alaska, I think.  We'll lose people along the way.  When they get tired."

Methos thinks of the towns south and east of Seacouver.  Suburbs and farther out.  Mountain places running to poverty and crystal meth, about to meet their first werewolf packs.

He says, "I can take you as far as Canada.  But I want to know your name."

"Oz."

"Wizard of?"

"It's short."

"Mmm.  Yes.  I'm Adam."

"As in?"

"No. Hungry?"

Oz waves jerky at him.  Glances at it.  Hands it to Maelcum with both hands.

Later, riding into the edge of the ocean storm, Oz says, "Mael'll stop.  Somewhere in Oregon.  He didn't want to leave."

"And then?"

"He'll hunt for a while.  Tangle with humans.  Someone'll hunt him down."

Dinner that Methos pays for.  Or.  Dinner for him.  Oz orders fries and a coke, flicks his eyes over Methos' hamburger like it's nothing he'd touch.

Gravel pull-out, hours after that.  He was starting to drift.  They might both survive a crash, but it'd take weeks to drag himself back from death in a gasoline fire.  Stretched in his laid-back seat and watching Oz play with the radio. Green dashboard-light on the edge of his dreams.

And the first grey light.  Oz isn't there.  On the picnic table outside, his shoes, clothes, backpack are all carefully stacked.

Methos waits.

He comes back naked, just before full dawn.  It's mountain-cold; Methos needed the car heater periodically to keep the worst of the chill off.  Sitting outside now with one of the blankets from the trunk wrapped around him.  He wants coffee.

Oz nods at him.  There's blood at the corners of his mouth, cedar bark and tree needles in his hair.  His skin's shadowed with thin earth.  He pulls on his pants, shirt, sandals.  Sweater he pulls out of his bag.  Fingerless gloves that don't seem any particular contradiction to his nearly-bare feet.

Oz says, "Some guys came by while you were asleep.  I traded a couple of tapes with them."

"Those were *mine*."

"Bootlegs.  Gotta keep 'em moving."

"I could kill you and no one would ever find your body."

"Silver bullets?"

"I would guess that beheading works quite well, even on you."

"I got you Chet Baker.  And some mixed Blue Note stuff."

"Jazz is not worth the price of breakfast."

"I ate."  Bloody little teeth.

Methos buys coffee at the next filling station and viciously offers Oz none of it.  Oz drifts on sixty-year-old trumpet riffs just as if he doesn't care.

Two hours to a major town.  Methos walks into the first K-Mart he sees and buys a discman, an adaptor, and a Coldplay CD.  Then goes back and replaces everything he's lost.  He does not apologize for his current taste in American pop.  He likes rhythmic creations, easy sounds, and unapologetic boybands.

The Backstreet Boys run for twenty minutes.  Oz says, "I could *bite* you."

"It wouldn't work.  Caspian tangled with a werewolf in Azerbaijan.  It took him a week to recover, and he was never much of a conversationalist after, but he wasn't much of one before, either."

"O-kay."

"We heal."

"Gotcha."

Washington State.

Oz asks, "Why not jazz?"

"You're too young for it."

Methos doesn't remember there being so much nostalgia in other time stretches.  Things came and went, changed little, and you let go.  No one in the Crimean War claimed baroque court music as a way of life.

The next diner that actually cooks, he buys the bloodiest hamburgers they make.  Raw meat in the kitchen.

Motel next to it.  He rents a double room and lets Oz follow him in.

He's waited days for hot water.  The shower's crowded and alive in ways he's rarely seen since people learned to fear the invisible dirt, but it gets him warm. Crouched in the tub, letting water pound over him.  Eventually, the numbness leaves his fingertips.

He comes out and Oz is curled on one bed, watching MTV.  It's oddly reassuring.

"Don't trade my music."  Sleep sounds very, very good.

He wakes after midnight, and the clock's a primitive, flipping creation.  The television's muted, but it never stops.  Oz is clean and wearing different clothes. His t-shirt and sweater drip-dry over the small desk chair.  He looks very young, sitting at the foot of Methos' bed and watching him very seriously.

"What?"

"You're really old.  But that's all, isn't it?"

"More or less."

"Thanks for the ride."

Oz crawls up the bed.  Settles on his knees, close up, then leans in and kisses him.  Sharp tongue at Methos' lips, licking him open.  Oz tastes like blood and cold weather, but also disturbingly like a very young American.  Wildlife and toothpaste.

And.  Sex isn't new, but this is the first time in this place, with this person.  Curious-friendly and very, very sharp.  His nails are broken, raw where they drag over Methos' chest.  Straddled naked, t-shirt off over his head, scratching his way down.

Shallow television light down his arm, wrapped around Oz's hip and fingering him open.  Pale skin without the dirt, freckles here and there.  Hands on his chest and panting breath on his shoulder.  Kiss, very shallow.

*mind the fangs*

Legs across his hips, settling down on him.  Riding him.  Slow breaths, little gasp as Oz slides down onto his cock, rocking there for long seconds before he pushes up again.  Underneath that pampered-child skin, this man is very, very strong.  Laughing at him with an absolutely straight face.

One hard thrust of his hips to get this child's attention.  Oz crackles blue and twists in answer.  There are monsters and demons and cranky, reclusive immortals all moving up this coast. Two of them in a trucker motel, fucking very slowly and very seriously.  It's *strange*, nothing animal about this at all.  Oz watches him all the time, moves in ways designed to hold both their attention.

Methos comes first.  Nothing like a battle for it, and he feels Oz's soft, pleased laughter all over his cock.  Oz slides off him, after.  Lies down next to him and rubs his own pale, slick cock against Methos' hip.  Kisses him.

"Hey."

Knee hooked across Methos' legs, kissing him again.  Lovely.  Methos pushes and Oz rolls onto his back, spreads his legs and pushes into the hand wrapped around his cock and *grins*, halfway between perfectly human and utterly appealing dog.  He pants while Methos jerks him.  Thousands of years of exactly this.  Or, if not exactly *this*, then enough like it.  Easy.

Oz whines a little when he comes.  He kisses after, and cuddles in a way that's utterly human.

Sharp smell of him.  That mouth licking him down into sleep.

Methos wakes again, cold, and Oz is naked and sitting cross-legged in the open doorway. He's looking seriously at something in his cupped hand.

"They invented central heat for a reason."

"Oh.  Sorry."  Oz pulls his knees in, pushes into a crouch, and lets his hands open.  A very frightened mouse dashes away into the near-morning.

"Was that breakfast?"

"No.  I was just curious."  Oz comes back, burrows in beside Methos.  Cold feet in the tangle of covers.

Methos is almost entirely asleep again when he notices the television's off.

Afternoon at the Canadian border.  Oz claimed the jazz tapes.  Took the screwdriver from the glove compartment without precisely asking for it.  The backpack's zipped closed and waiting at his feet.  Folded papers and plastic laminate in his pocket that proved, when Methos asked, to be Oz's birth certificate and driver's license.  Methos thinks they might even be real.

Cars run up to the customs station and the gate beyond.  "Is this lineup full of werewolves?"

"Most of them are going through the mountains.  Some of the pack's been out there for generations.  No papers."  Oz slips his shoes on, opens the car door. "Thanks for the ride."

Quick lean-in, very light kiss.  

There are other young men on foot.  A few young women.  Very bright children moving across a half-guarded frontier.

He turns the car around.

An hour and a half to Seacouver, south.  Pop radio along the coast.  He's in traffic, leaning over for his cell phone, when he realizes the glove compartment's acquired a tiny skeleton and a handful of loose, soft fur.


End file.
